


Turning Shadows Into Shapes

by Lorinand_Lost (Barefoot_Dancer)



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Formenos, Funerary Rites, Gen, Post-Darkening of Valinor, finwë's duel with morgoth, theft of the silmarils
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29751798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barefoot_Dancer/pseuds/Lorinand_Lost
Summary: "Fëanáro learns many lessons in the Darkness."[In which Fingolfin puts a blade to his brother's throat]
Relationships: Fëanor | Curufinwë & Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: The Tolkien Decameron Project





	Turning Shadows Into Shapes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt meme on tumblr (tol-himling)
> 
> prompt: “I’ve never killed anyone before”
> 
> Fic Title from "Torches" by The Oh Hellos

_"But Melkor was also there, and he came to the house of Fëanor and there he slew Finwë King of the Noldor before his doors, and spilled the first blood in the Blessed Realm; for Finwë alone had not fled from the horror of the Dark.”_

\- Quenta Silmarillion, “The Flight of the Noldor”

~~~

Fëanáro learns many lessons in the Darkness.

First: he learns that blood, in the flickering light of the tallow lamp, looks black. 

“What do you think, Little Prince?” it whispers with its dancing tongues. “Doesn’t he yet look like he sleeps?”

Fëanáro remembers his mother, how her laughter lived like a shade in their house, how her chest rose and fell in her bier in the Gardens. Míriel was sleeping, until she wasn’t. Finwë isn’t sleeping. And the black blood whispers lies where it mixes with Finwë’s hair and Fëanáro’s hair and the lamplight. 

~~~

Second: he learns how to scream, to tear at his hair, to fight like a wild thing against the arms that pull him from his position of supplication. 

His father’s broken body, already bereft of spirit, lies cooling on the floor. His hands, Fëanáro thinks, brown and slender, are twisted like his sword is twisted - beyond repair. It is unbearable to Fëanáro to leave him there, and equally unbearable to begin the funeral rites - the rites for the first Untimely death in Aman. 

Nolofinwë is there, and he is the one to drag Fëanáro, frothing in his anger and his grief, into a shadowy antechamber. Fëanáro struggles mightily against the hard bar of his arm, until he realizes his hands are slipping not in old blood but falling tears. His brother’s cheeks are wet, and Fëanáro’s cheeks are wet, and Fëanor turns to wrap him in a bloodstained embrace. This is not the first time they have seen each other cry, though it may be the first time since Nolofinwë was very small indeed that Fëanáro has held his brother in his arms.

~~~

Third: he learns that his little brother possesses his own sort of fire. 

When they emerge from the antechamber, hair arranged and hands washed, the coppery scent of blood lingers. Nolofinwë is straight-backed and clear-eyed. 

Nolofinwë will not allow Fëanáro to deny Finwë the rites he is owed, the rites that no one thought would come to pass on these shores, the rites that harken back to an age of shadows and things that hunted in the endless night. Spirit, and ceremony, and a light in the dark. 

Fëanáro will not allow Nolofinwë to be the only one to prepare their father for his pyre. They will go together to the spring to collect the pure water, to return balancing the metal canisters on their shoulders, as is the duty of the children of the Departed. It is their duty to bathe him, to wrap him in his white linens and wreathe him in jasmine and basil, to walk thrice together around the pyre as they consign him to the Eternal Flame. 

Old suspicions and hurts fog the air. While returning - somewhere before forest gives way to field - harsh words are exchanged. Fëanáro has grown tired of his brother’s resolve, his mind’s eye turning bitterly inward upon his own insufficiencies and perceived failures, wailing at him like he is still that child who wondered why Mother didn’t wake. Nolofinwë’s seeming composure is odious to Fëanáro in his state of unravelling, and he picks at those old loose threads. 

Nolofinwë, for his part, will only tolerate so much sniping before he wears thin. In an instant the metal urns hit the earth, and Fëanáro follows their trajectory moments later. The lantern winks out. They grapple in the dust and the dark, snarling like beasts. Fëanáro rips the gold bangle from Nolofinwë’s right ear - with his teeth. 

He is driving a knee upward repeatedly against his brother’s spleen when he feels it - the sly prickle of steel against his throat. The knife - but a few inches long - is one Fëanáro recognizes as his own work, gifted in a better time for the opening of letters, and of oysters, and not of the fluttering arteries of the neck. It kisses him and whispers “Witness the work of your hands.”

“I’ve never killed anyone before.” Nolofinwë’s breath is harsh in Fëanáro’s ear where he has him pinned in the dirt. “But you - you are the reason Father left Tirion. You are the reason he guarded the door when all others fled. Our father's life is the price of three baubles. You, I could kill.”

Something wild flares in Fëanáro’s eyes, like the wolf who knows the hunter has found him, and he leans forward into the blade. He feels it bite into him, feels the blood seep into his collar. “Brother of my blood,” he hisses. 

Nolofinwë drops the blade, throwing himself backward in horror, hand coming up to trace that seven-year-old band at his throat, silver against his midnight skin. Fëanáro laughs - a horrible and rough thing - and pushes himself to his feet.

Fëanáro rekindles the lamp, flame illuminating the planes of his cheeks. His deep-set eyes glitter like obsidian. He gives his hand to his younger brother, who looks all the smaller for how he cringes from Fëanáro, and from himself, and from the light. He still takes Fëanáro’s hand, though. 

~~~

Later, Nolofinwë stands on cold shores and whispers “I could kill you.” _I could kill for you._

This is the first of many lessons that the Darkness teaches Nolofinwë. 

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhh I’m so sorry. I don’t know what you were hoping for exactly, but I’ve got a fresh plate of pain for you. 
> 
> It took me a while to get to the “I’ve never killed anyone before” part, huh? Make no mistake, fingolfin and feanor are More Similar That Either Cares to Admit.
> 
> I was thinking about what would convince feanor to respect fingolfin. I think on one hand he already does, because he considers him a competent threat to his throne. On the other hand, he always calls him half-brother, and it’s fingolfin who promises to be his full brother in heart. And in some ways, in the state feanor is in at the moment, a supreme act of violence might be the only thing that drives him to claim kinship with fingolfin (largely because he knows how horrifying that is to fingolfin, to be united in violence). 
> 
> Noldorin funeral rites are loosely based on a conversation I had with my mother’s best friend about her own mother’s funeral and Hindu burial rites. I was inspired by arwenindomiel’s diverse tolkien edits for TSS2020.


End file.
